


She/He Isn't In Love With Me

by ErinWantsToWrite



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Kinda, Light Angst, Natsu Dragneel/Lucy Heartfilia Fluff, Post-Alvarez Teikoku | Alvarez Empire Arc, Short One Shot, i love them, lucy heartfilia is a sweetheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinWantsToWrite/pseuds/ErinWantsToWrite
Summary: Lucy patches Natsu up after a fight, reflecting on her past and how she got here. Natsu can't stop thinking about how amazing his teammate is. Both are in love. Both know they're in love. And neither of them believes the other feels the same. But, of course, Natsu is involved. Anything can change at the drop of a hat.-AKA my friends and I started a writing prompt game, and I got First Kiss/Angst. Of course, I thought about these two first.
Relationships: Natsu Dragneel/Lucy Heartfilia
Comments: 1
Kudos: 134





	She/He Isn't In Love With Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reagan_The_First](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reagan_The_First/gifts).



> Hi hi hi!! I hope you enjoy this one-shot for my favorite couple.
> 
> Dedicated to Reagan_The_First because they got me into writing for Fairy Tail again. I hope things are going well for you and you are back on your feet again soon! 
> 
> To my readers: If you can donate to helping stop the fires out west, PLEASE DO!! People are losing homes right and left. Also, if you can donate to those who are in need because of the hurricanes in the south, every bit helps! Lake Charles is specifically hurting right now from Hurricane Laura, and there is another coming in that plans to hit on 10/9/2020. Many of our authors on Ao3 are affected by these disasters, and if every reader donated what they could to help people out, there'd be a significant amount of lives impacted!

“You’re an idiot, you know.” She pulls on the bandage tightly, making sure he lets out a hiss of pain. “One day you’re gonna run into a fight you know nothing about and get injured beyond help and _I’m_ going to have to fix it.”

His back is facing her, but she can hear the smug grin in his voice. “You already do that, Luce.”

“Did I say you could talk? I’m not done yelling at you!” She slaps the back on his head. Natsu grunts, crossing his arms in annoyance. Yet he complies, he doesn’t say another word.

She rubs some medicine onto the next wound, the tension becoming more palpable. It seems like every fight he goes into he gets more and more injured at the end of it. Her mind starts to wander into darker places.

For her childhood, she spent most of it alone in vast, echoey hallways that only seemed to remind her how empty they were all the time. Her mother’s passing had sent her into a dark, unrecognizable place. Her father had grown distant, leaving nothing but cold, empty memories.

It was only when she had packed her bags and made her way to Hargeon Port and met Natsu- and by extension, Fairy Tail- that she had broken from that past of stifling pressure to maintain her image, of tearful nights spent under sparkling skies, only _reading_ of faraway lands, and the loneliness her house had held. It was because of Natsu that she found a family beyond any blood ties, because of Natsu that she could reach those dream-like places she longed for as a child.

“I can’t imagine you not coming back.”

She can. He had before.

The year that she spent alone was proof that he could leave, and proof that though she could continue, she would never be complete. Not without him.

She doesn’t know when her friendship with him slipped into love. One moment she was reaching for his hand to help him up, and the next she was bandaging him up after a fight and begging the universe to never let him leave her again. 

She is her own person. She could live without him. But she doesn’t want to.

She was a writer, so you think she’d be able to tell him. There were many words she could write over and over to him, to describe how she feels, but she can’t ever bring herself to say them. She knows they’d be wasted.

“I can.” He says.

Lucy slows her process of bandaging his back, staring at the back of his head. 

“I can imagine myself not coming back.” The hotel room is silent, except for his quiet voice. “It’s the hardest concept for me to grasp, but I can. There are a lot of people it’d hurt.”

He turns in the chair to face her. His eye was bruised, a scratch on his cheek starting to scab. Little pink scars decorated his skin in various places, evidence of past battles. Lucy also had them on her own skin in places. 

“The time where we thought we lost Lisanna forever was terrible for the guild. A member of our family had passed, and we barely handled it. Moving forward was painful. We would think about her every day. I mean, I grew up with her.” Natsu’s set his hand on Lucy’s knee, rubbing tiny circles into her skin while deep in thought. “I know what kind of pain it’d cause my family and friends if I didn’t return.”

Despite his injuries, he can still smile. It’s different from his sharp grins. There’s no mischievous glint in his eyes. Just a soft look on his face that she rarely sees. It’s times like these where she couldn’t read his mind just by looking at him.

“I told you we’ll always be together, Luce.” He’s close to her face. “I made a promise to ya, and I don’t go back on promises.”

Her chest gives a tight squeeze. He’s always spouting out motivational crap, always managing to bring her back from wherever dark place she’s wandered into while overthinking. He’s always there to drag her right back to where he is. And always managing to make her fall in love all over again.

Even though he doesn’t even _try._

She wants to blurt it out. Wants to smack her hands onto his stupid face and tell him what she desperately wants to, wants to kiss this idiotic, goofy, loveable man, she wants to love him and not be scared to admit it.

But she knows he’ll never feel that way.

Natsu isn’t that type of guy. He isn’t interested in romance, he doesn’t dream of a future with Lucy beyond them going on adventures as a team, he doesn’t lay awake at night when they’re sleeping side by side under the forest canopy, the fire crackling and dying down after burning away all the sticks, thinking about how close their hands were to touching. 

And _he_ doesn’t stare at her in the guild hall as she recalls stories from their adventures and shares them- while exaggerating parts to sound cool. He doesn’t find excuses to hold her hand as they walk to places. He doesn’t immediately think of her when he’s imagining his future.

Not that anyone… would… do that, though. Not at all.

He’s thinking of going on adventures with their team, he’s sleeping during those late hours in those forests, he’s starting fights in the guild hall after one too many jokes about his bad storytelling, he’s just concerned about the next place they should go eat when they’re walking.

Because he doesn’t love her the way she loves him.

There’s this unspoken rule she’s put down for herself. She knows that admitting these feelings out loud will change what they have. She doesn’t want to _lose_ him.

Because for all the friends that she has, for all of the family she’s fought side by side with in her many battles, she knows she’d be lonely without him. She’d feel exactly as she had for all those years of her childhood.

“I know you don’t go back on promises. Just… be more careful, alright?” She touches his hand, which is still placed on her knee, looking down at their fingers touching. She wants to intertwine their fingers and never let go. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, Luce.” He scoffs.

“You’re welcome.” She laughs, finally smiling. She catches his shoulders relax once he notices her grin.

“I’ll try to be more careful…” He says, but she knows it’s hard to commit to _that_. It is Natsu, after all. She’s had her fair share of breaking things too. It must be a curse on the Fairy Tail name to be a little (a lot) reckless.

“I’m not asking for you to play it too safe, I know you can handle yourself, but I _am_ saying that most of our money goes to medical supplies.” She’s started looking at a scratch on his arm.

“Luce.”

She looks up. Natsu appears to be in deep thought.

“What?”

After a beat of silence, Lucy wants to punch him. “I forgot.”

-

_She’s really close_. Natsu thinks. She’s close enough that he can enjoy the little details about her. How her eyebrows wrinkle forward in concentration, how she keeps having to push back a lock of hair in order to see. He can admire the tiny freckles on her cheeks and ignore how badly he wants to trace them. He can see old, tiny scratches on her hands from years of work.

Natsu can see her worried look fade as he reassures her that he’s not going to leave. That they’ll always be together.

She’s close enough to kiss. He keeps thinking that. He could just lean just a little forward… Natsu wants to do it- just lean forward and kiss her.

It’s actually terrible, in his opinion, that he has no quarrels going headfirst into a fight and not worrying, but he can’t kiss the girl he loves because he’s scared.

But she doesn’t love him the way he loves her.

She’s _Lucy._ How could a girl like her fall in love with him? She’s so smart, and capable, and strong. She’s kind, probably the most forgiving person that he’s ever met.

She’s too forgiving, he thinks. Lucy should still be angry at him. She should be furious, should yell at him, let him know he fucked up. She should be furious that he left for a year and was too much of a coward to tell her in person, so he had to write _a note._

But she isn’t. She’s here bandaging his wounds and worrying over him. She learned how to patch up wounds just to help Wendy from spending so much time healing him. 

She’s forgiving, smart, kind, beautiful. He thinks the world of her.

He just wishes he was good at _saying_ that. Lucy’s so good with words, so amazing in fact that she won an entire award for being good at words and storytelling. He’s still working on _reading_ her book, as it’s hard for him to understand some words, (and he has to restart some chapters because he starts to get preoccupied thinking about how talented Lucy is to write a whole _book_ ) but he’s getting there.

Natsu wants to blurt it out. He wants to be good enough at words to say what he wants to her but he just _isn’t._ And then he wants to just lean forward and kiss her but he’s too much of a coward to do so.

He’s reminded a lot that he doesn’t deserve her.

“So… there’s actually something I wanted to ask you,” Lucy says while cleaning the cut on his arm.

“What is it?” He replies. Lucy leans back in her chair- much to Natsu’s displeasure, as she is now not as close as he wants her to be- and sighs.

“I know you said it doesn’t matter, but back when you told me we were heading on this quest, you said you were gonna tell me what you wanted to do when all that mess with Zeref was over.” Natsu curses the way Lucy’s eyes can break him down so easily.

“Yeah?”

“What do you mean, yeah?” Lucy pouts for a second. “What did you want to do?”

That was a simple answer. He was planning to tell her.

He had this whole speech prepared in his head, actually.

But he never said it. He knew things would change if he did. And he doesn’t want to lose her.

“I wanted to go on a one hundred year quest, obviously.” Natsu snorts.

Lucy blinks in surprise but then sighs knowingly. “I guess that was pretty obvious.” She laughs. Natsu’s ears ring with the sound. His heart gives a squeeze. Her nose always wrinkles a bit when she laughs. He’s always been glad she didn’t cover her mouth to laugh when she was with him, versus how she did when they were with others. 

“That’s a lie.”

Lucy pauses, looking at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

Natsu realizes he’s blurted it out.

She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t love him _like that_. She doesn’t. She doesn’t.

So why doesn’t he stop himself from leaning forward?

It was quick. One could barely even notice it happened. He simply leaned forward, one hand grabbing her wrist gently, the other placed on her knee, and kissed her gently. It was fast, simple, and so _easy_.

He stares at her flushed face, both silent, not knowing what to say. A million words were rushing around in her head and his head had gone completely blank with astoundment that he had actually done that. Seconds passed but it felt like minutes.

She had her mouth wide open, gaping like a fish out of water, cheeks fully flushed red and eyes wide. He, upon really understanding what he had just done, stood up abruptly, also red.

“Sorry.” He blurts out. “I’ll get someone else to finish my bandages.”

“No!” She grabs his hand and tugs him back down into his seat. Her hands are shaking, and only seem to steady once she touches his hand.

“I’ll finish your bandages.” She says, already grabbing the next one. Natsu doesn’t know what to say or do. So he lets her tenderly place a bandage on his forearm.

It’s quiet, too quiet, as she works. It’s so quiet that Natsu can hear himself think, and he doesn’t like _that_ one bit. Is she going to say _anything?_ It’s making him want to scream. Doesn’t he always want to scream though? He’s starting to panic, though panic might not be the best explanation. More like he wants her to actually _say something_ about what just happened. Unless she wants to ignore it, and continue on as normal? Can she just say something already!?

“There.” Lucy’s voice is just above a whisper, but he can hear her nerves making her voice shake. “All better now.”

“Lu-”

This time, she’s the one who kisses him. It’s a little longer, a little sweeter. They’re terrified of it but they’re both not pulling away. She tastes a little like she got a punch to the lip during their earlier fight, but he can taste the sweets they got at a store. She must have grabbed a snack.

When they pulled back, they knew the kiss was just a few seconds, but it felt like minutes. They’re both unsure of what to say, just staring at each other.

“That’s what I wanted to do.” Natsu finally breaks the silence.

“Cool,” Lucy says.

“Cool?”

“Yeah. Cool.” She laughs over her embarrassment. Natsu smirks, unable to control his joy that she isn’t utterly disgusted at what happened.

“This doesn’t… change anything. Right?” Lucy says after a moment, unsure of what else to ask.

“I hope it does.” Natsu looks at her incredulously. “You’re my best friend, Luce, but I think even best friends don’t go kissing each other like it’s normal. I don’t go around kissing Happy.”

“Well-”

“Don’t.”

They were comforted in the fact that they didn’t need to say anything beyond that. All the worries they both shared, all the late nights up thinking about how they could never be together, seemed to vanish just like that. All with two kisses. Tension releases from Lucy's shoulders, a wave a relief washing over her. 

“If you had just done that ages ago I could have saved myself some hours of not sleeping.” Lucy groans. But she holds his hand tight, not daring to let go.

Natsu grunts, slapping away Lucy's hands. "Oiii, Luce, why do _I_ have to put in all the work, huh?" Lucy gasps indignantly.

"What in the world does that mean!?" She yells, already grabbing at his face to pull at his cheeks with a vice-like grip. Natsu yells out in pain, and does the same to her, both pushing at each other like little kids. "You're so fucking rude! Why do I like you? Stupid flame-brain! I oughta kick your ass!"

"This is assault!"

**Author's Note:**

> That was fun, huh? I might come up with a second chapter for this, but it IS meant to be a one chapter thing lol  
> \- Hope you enjoyed it! If you like this, why not look into more of my fics? I try to update when I can. Leave a comment below for me, I love love love reading them!!


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